HUMA 17000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Lewis Carroll, Tabula Rasa
3 Aug 2016
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An essay concerning human understanding a seminal defense of tabula rasa . Not all words are names of ideas: locke points out that not all words are names of ideas. Negative words such as nothing do not stand for ideas but for their absence. I see nobody on the road, said alice. I only wish i had such eyes the king remarked in a fretful tone. And at that distance, too! (lewis carroll, 1871, through the looking glass) More words that are not names of ideas. Locke on abstraction and generalization: most words stand not for particular things, but for generalizations we make abstractly in our minds, a language which completely reflects our experience is both impossible and useless. Impossible because it requires infinite memory to learn. Linguistic signs charles sanders peirce (1839-1914) three kinds of signs. Each type of sign involves a different relation between the sign and what it signifies: icon: similarity of form, imitation.
